Portside

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of a lawsuit filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union "right to work" state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions' collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.

Don’t expect CNN to include the prefix “right-wing” to the use of the word extremism or terrorism, for their, and the mainstream media’s, fear of the right-wing hysteria machine is ever present and always palpable. In fact, CNN refused to identify the Tea Party flag. Dan Simon of CNN went so far as to avoid the far right’s wrath that he said the killers “left behind some type of flag with some kind of insignia.”

"Think whatever you want about war and American war-making, but keep in mind that we are inside an enormous propaganda machine of militarism, even if we barely acknowledge the space in our lives that it fills. Inside it, only certain opinions, certain thoughts, are acceptable, or even in some sense possible."